Welcome to the Aquarius New Moon, the time in the lunar calendar when we look ahead to the future. What are our hopes and dreams? Aquarius also helps us to see the bigger picture and reach for friends and community as well as social issues and causes. The new moon is on January 21, 2023 at 3:54 pm ET, 1 degree Aquarius. That’s 12:54 pm Los Angeles, 8:54 pm London, 10:54 pm Johannesburg, 7:54 am Sydney on January 22 and 9:54 am Auckland.
New moons are new beginnings. They bring us into the energy of the renewal. They say that, over the course of the lunar month, we will live life through the archetype of the sign. When we reach Aquarius, we’ve nearly reached the end of the zodiac. The coming weeks aren’t about our individual lives, but our collective lives.
Aquarius is a big picture sign. As the last air sign, it takes the ideas and choices of Gemini, the connection of Libra, and builds social and informational frameworks. Our world may be governed through Capricorn, the previous sign, but it runs on Aquarius. Here we find friendship and community, social causes and social issues, justice and equity, politics and ideology, humanity and the world.
Like all signs, Aquarius has two sides. It can be both humanity and inhumanity, connection and disconnection, equity and inequity. We’re navigating both sides of the sign over the coming weeks.
In particular, this is last call for Saturn’s visit of Aquarius, a planet that first arrived in March 2020 and again in December 2020. During this period we’ve had our work cut out for us in all things Aquarius. We’ve struggled with connection. We’ve had to work to build new community. Friendships have been altered. We have an awareness of the world that we didn’t have at the start of 2020.
And, so, this may be a lunar month when all our work comes together and takes shape and form. Or, we may see the lesson for what it is. Or, we hit a milestone that has its roots in the events of 2020. Venus is also conjunct Saturn. We have to know our value and worth.
Something else to consider over the coming weeks is that this lunar month marks the midpoint of the eclipses of October-November 2022 and April-May 2023. Interesting things happen in this midpoint. We’re at a critical point. Major events may come in and out of our lives that have their roots three months before. Life can take a turn, sometimes quickly so.
Add to this Uranus stationing direct on January 22 at 14 Taurus. This infuses the energy of reinvention, awakenings, sudden shifts, and the unexpected into our experiences. Events of January-February 2023 thread back to Uranus’s retrograde turn on August 24, 2022 … as well as Uranus’s first arrival in Taurus in May 2018, March 2019. (Read more about Uranus in Taurus.)
There may be seismic events ahead, events that further take us into a new chapter or pull us away from the familiar. As Saturn comes to the end of its time in Aquarius, it also pulls away from Uranus, a tense square that has reshaped our lives since 2020. Think of this new moon period as its last push and pull. Stressful as it may be, it gives us an opportunity to break out of anything that is holding us back.
Learn more about 2023’s astrology in my three-hour video, The Astrology of 2023. In it, I cover the big shifts ahead in March when Saturn arrives in Pisces and Pluto makes its first visit to Aquarius, the start of a new era. Get the video in the link below.